AMBIVALENCE AND SUBVERSION IN MISSIONARY NARRATIVES

Abstract [English]

Postcolonial studies have focused much of their attention on critiquing imperialism and its repercussions. In this process charges have been levelled not only against the imperialists, who are the primary agents in establishing this colossal exploitative enterprise, but also on informal agents like missionaries who were also present at the scene during that period This study aims to analyse the persistent debate over the part played by the missionaries in the consolidation of the empire. It has been a postcolonial refrain that missionary writings played a significant role in creating a larger than life image of the missionaries as pioneer risk takers and conveniently othering the natives and representing them as barbarians passively awaiting rescue and relief. Consequently, the relation between missionaries and the empire has been the subject of much debate and deliberations, hence this paper examines this charge by analysing select missionary writings to prove whether these incriminate them or stand antithetical to colonialism as a digressive mechanism.For this purpose the paper closely scrutinizes Native Life in Travancore and The Land of Charity: A Descriptive Account of Travancore and its People, with Especial Reference to Missionary Labour – which are ethnographic accounts penned by an LMS missionary Samuel Mateer, to investigate whether or not missionary writings extend as imperialist discourses. The argument affected is that, these texts display ambivalence and hence, cannot be labelled as unequivocally imperialist. The surfacing of multiple conflicting impulses in these writings, problematise a simplistic categorisation of it as a pure imperialistic discourse.